Asadollah Mirza could not resist the opportunity for mischief; he pointed at Dustali Khan, “Mr. Dustali Khan was asking after you . . . he’s very partial to you . . . just a minute ago he was remembering you very affectionately.”
Dear Uncle wanted to cut him off somehow or other because Dustali Khan was in a bad way and it was possible that Asadollah Mirza’s joking might end up by having a serious effect on his health. Everyone was aware of this but they couldn’t openly interrupt and Asadollah Mirza wouldn’t let the subject go, “By the way, Shir Ali, you said the sheep’s organ was swollen; did you cut it with a knife or with a cleaver?”
Fortunately Shir Ali didn’t hear this question properly but Dustali Khan pushed his hands into his groin, his pallid lips started trembling, and a moaning sound came out of his throat.
Dear Uncle gave Asadollah Mirza an angry look and said, “Asadollah, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
And then in a loud voice he said to Shir Ali, “In any case, I’m very grateful to you . . . God willing, you’ll come next time.”
“At your service, sir. God willing, the prayers of your ceremony will be answered.”
Luckily Shir Ali didn’t stay any longer; after he had said goodbye to each person in turn, he was on his way.
When Mash Qasem had closed the door behind him and returned to the group, he heaved a sigh of relief, “Thank God he didn’t get wind of it that Dustali Khan . . . I mean I was really afraid that . . .”
Shir Ali’s arrival and departure had thoroughly discomposed Dear Uncle and he cut Mash Qasem off, “Now don’t you start speechifying . . . as far as I can see it’s better that we leave the rest of this discussion until tomorrow . . . of course, until I’ve got to the bottom of this business I’m not going to leave it alone.”
Then he turned to Aziz al-Saltaneh, “Madam, please return to your house and rest there until tomorrow.”
Aziz al-Saltaneh turned to her husband, “Get up, let’s go home.”
Dustali Khan who was just beginning to recover his breath looked at her with round, terrified eyes and said, “What . . . we’re going home? I go into that house with you?”
“I didn’t say a word in front of Shir Ali because I’m going to settle up with you myself . . . but tonight I’ll leave you alone. Get up, you deadbeat, and come and sleep.”
“I’d a thousand times rather go under Shir Ali’s cleaver than go back with you to that . . .”
Dear Uncle Napoleon cut him off, “Madam, tonight let Dustali sleep at my house and then we can talk tomorrow.”
Aziz al-Saltaneh wanted to object but once again there was a knocking at the outer door. When it was opened, the voice of Qamar—Aziz al-Saltaneh’s fat, simple daughter—could be heard, “Is my mummy here?”
And she came toward the group. As soon as she saw her mother and Dustali Khan she started to laugh idiotically, “Did mummy finally cut off Dustali daddy’s willy, then?”
Aziz al-Saltaneh said in an irritated voice, “Qamar! What kind of language is that!”
Seeing his stepdaughter there, Dustali Khan became angry and shouted, “When that woman started after me with a knife, this girl was shouting ‘Mummy, cut it off! Mummy, cut it off!’ She should be put in prison, too!”
Then everyone started talking and interfering in the business. Once again Qamar let out a loud laugh and said, “Did you really cut it off?”
Asadollah Mirza, who was laughing helplessly, said in the kind of voice people use to talk to little children, “Well done, little girl . . . if your husband does nasty things, will you cut it off or not?”
“Sure I will.”
“Right from the bottom?”
“Right from the bottom!”
“You won’t leave one tiny little bit of it?”
“I won’t leave one tiny little bit of it!”
Suddenly a tempestuous yell broke from Aziz al-Saltaneh, “Have you no shame! Or modesty either! You’re putting words in the child’s mouth that tomorrow a suitor’s going to hear about . . . O God , O God, I wish I could never see one of my relatives again as long as I live. Are you a relative or a thorn in my side?”
But Asadollah Mirza was not the kind of person to back down so easily. He yelled back, “Moment . . . moment . . . just a minute, my good woman . . . if cutting it off is so bad, why were you cutting it off from this poor motherless child? If this poor motherless child hadn’t jumped out of the way, he’d now be Lord High Chief Eunuch!”
“Talking about your exalted ancestors, are you, you rotten brat . . . what I want to know is, don’t I have the right to do what I want with my husband? What the hell’s it got to do with you? Are you the boss of this town?”
Asadollah Mirza was furious. Dear Uncle and the rest of the group were trying to calm the argument down but he shouted out, interrupting them, “Moment . . . moment . . . What’s it to me? To hell with him and his noble member . . .”
People were not used to hearing Asadollah Mirza shout and almost everyone fell silent. But Asadollah Mirza still couldn’t regain his normal self control. He took advantage of everyone else’s silence and continued in a quieter tone, “No matter how noble the member that does your business is, it’s better it be got rid of, condemned . . .”
As he was saying this he took a delicate little penknife from his pocket. He opened it and continued, “But please, next time, use this penknife . . . because it’s a pity to use a kitchen knife.”
Qamar started to laugh foolishly. Aziz al-Saltaneh, trembling with fury, screamed, “It’s a pity for me I’m talking to such trash, such filth . . . come on, let’s go, child!”
Immediately she grabbed her daughter’s arm and set off for the door to the garden. As she was following her mother Qamar said with a laugh, “It’s a pity you didn’t cut it off, though, mummy, we’d have had a good laugh!”
Mash Qasem shook his head and said, “Why should I lie? I wouldn’t take this Miss Qamar if they gave me all the tea in China . . . God help her husband!”
Dear Uncle’s lack of success in his plan to use this event to disgrace my father had left him very gloomy and introspective, and everyone present was waiting to see what he would decide. Shamsali Mirza, who had been silent throughout all this, stood up and said, “Well, in any event, our time has been wasted and we have come to no conclusion. Cross-examination and judicial investigation cannot come to any conclusion in such an atmosphere; with your permission, your humble servant will take his leave. Asadollah, off we go!”
It was clear that Asadollah was sorry to leave the gathering; he stood up and said, “We’re off . . . God willing, the prayers of your mourning ceremony will be granted . . . God willing, Dustali Khan will sleep well and won’t have dreams of lions and wild animals, and God willing, all five members of his body will stay healthy and in place. Amen!”
Shamsali Mirza and Asadollah Mirza set off and Dear Uncle also turned toward his house. “Get up, Dustali! Get up, stay here tonight and tomorrow, we’ll think of something.”
Dustali Khan shouted, “There’s no way I’m staying . . . I’m going . . .”
“Where are you going? Be sensible! Get up and don’t talk rubbish!”
“I’m not staying . . . I’m not staying . . . I don’t want to see anyone at all . . . I don’t want to see anyone in this family . . . you’re all out for my blood . . . Asghar the murderer was an angel compared to the lot of you!”
Dear Uncle Napoleon exploded, “Shut up, Dustali! Get up and get going and if you don’t I’ll tell Mash Qasem to take you by the scruff of the neck and drag you into the house!”
Dustali Khan quieted down and set off for Dear Uncle’s house in front of Dear Uncle and Mash Qasem.
My mother had gone home before the others and it seemed that she had immediately gone under the mosquito net to sleep. I went back to the ho
use on tiptoe. My father, who was quite sure that everyone in the house was under the mosquito nets sleeping, was in a corner talking quietly with our servant. I quietly slid under the net and listened carefully. Just as I’d guessed, our servant had been spying for my father and was telling him what had happened. Every now and then my father would interrupt him and say “I heard that myself.” From this I realized that, besides sending our servant to spy for him, he himself had been listening in some corner to the conversation of the people at Dear Uncle’s gathering, since he’d even heard the quarrel between Aziz al-Saltaneh and Asadollah Mirza.
When my father went under the mosquito net to sleep, the sound of him and my mother quietly talking caught my attention. Anger and a terrible desire for revenge were apparent in my father’s voice, and in my mother’s I could sense her worry and sadness.
“Dear, I’d die for you, but, for my sake, let bygones be bygones! Don’t keep on with it! Just have pity on me . . . for my sake . . . things have got so bad that my brother’s going to have nothing to do with me . . .”
“Well, well! What a noble person, what a great gentleman your brother is, to be sure . . . by the way, which brother are you talking about . . . the hero of the Battle of Kazerun? The Napoleon of our time? The Iron Man? The Holy Man? Because yes, of course, he is a Holy Man too, this evening he put on a mourning ceremony for Moslem ibn Aghil! Wonderful! That’s the kind of person people call holy! That’s the kind of person they call fearless and brave! He cuts the water off from his sister’s family . . . just what Shemr did in the desert at Karbela, and then he has a mourning ceremony for Moslem ibn Aghil. Now just you wait, tomorrow new things are going to happen . . . by the way, tomorrow evening make rice with herbs and fish . . . it’s a while now since I promised that poor Shir Ali the butcher that we’d give him rice with herbs and fish.”
My mother’s pleas for him to calm down had no effect and the conversation ended with her in tears.
FIVE
I WAS LEFT CONFUSED and bewildered and at a loss as to what to do. I’d given up hope that somehow or other the quarrel between Dear Uncle Napoleon and my father would come to an end. O Lord, why hadn’t I appreciated how precious those cloudless days had been? What happy days they were, when Dear Uncle and my father would sit on cushions under the sweetbrier arbor, playing at backgammon and smoking the waterpipe, and we would be playing in a corner or in the garden somewhere. Both Layli and I liked to sit next to them and watch. Perhaps it wasn’t their game that was interesting to us so much as their habit of reciting poems and bits of epics. When Dear Uncle was winning he would look at the dice in his hand for a moment and then he would stretch out his head toward my father and, in the rhythm of someone reciting an epic, he’d chant:
“Backgammon is for heroes, not for you—
A peasant’s spade’s more suitable for you!”
And my father would impatiently shout, “Throw the dice, man! And don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched!” When my father was winning he would say in a perfectly serious voice, “Layli dear, can you do something for me?” Layli would very innocently say “Yes” and then my father would say in that same serious voice, “Can you ask your mother to bring over a few walnuts so that your dad can play marbles with them?” and Layli and I would burst out laughing.
I remember the days they would take us out to a restaurant. It was quite a journey from our house to the restaurant—a distance that nowadays would take a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes by car lasted almost an hour then in a horse-drawn carriage. Usually Mash Qasem would sit next to the carriage driver, since on the return journey he had to hold a lantern up in front of Dear Uncle. The street lamps gave so little light that it was difficult to see and the streets were full of ruts and potholes. Eating ice cream in the restaurant, and sometimes going for a boat ride on the restaurant lake, left me with sweet, heart-wrenching memories. Then I hadn’t appreciated the pleasure of being with Layli, but that night memories came before my eyes, moment by moment, of the times I’d spent beside her in the restaurant.
Going to Sha’abdolazim, going for train rides, going to the Davud shrine . . . I had so many memories of being with Layli that I could have filled the rest of my life with them, but these were all memories of Layli my cousin and I didn’t have even one hour of memories of the Layli I was in love with. It was just about the time I fell in love with her that the family difficulties started. That damned dubious noise in the middle of Dear Uncle’s war story . . . that damned thief who’d come to Dear Uncle’s house . . . Dear Uncle’s damned support for the Constitutional Revolution . . . my father’s damned mention of Colonel Liakhoff . . . and, to cap it all, Aziz al-Saltaneh’s damned behavior. Things had turned out in such a way that all these events and people had got mixed up with our blameless love, even Shir Ali the butcher, so that when I thought about Layli, my thoughts inevitably led me to Dustali Khan and Aziz al-Saltaneh’s plot to cut off his noble member and finally to Shir Ali the butcher. My biggest bad luck was that I couldn’t see Layli any more and had to content myself with thinking about her, and recently thoughts of Layli ended up with Shir Ali the butcher.
I jumped up from sleep, wakened by the sound of knocking at our front door. Someone was asking for my father. I listened carefully.
“Very sorry to trouble you at this time, sir. I wanted to know if the water distributor you’d asked for has done his job or not?”
“I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Razavi. While you’re here we’ve nothing to worry about. We’ve filled the drinking-water cistern, and the cistern for the garden, and the pool.”
“It was a difficult job because getting water for a distributor one night earlier than the district’s turn is quite tricky. He had to bring it from another district to give to you . . . but we couldn’t refuse a commission from you, sir.”
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am, Mr. Razavi. Rest assured that the business of your transfer will be over by the end of the week; I’ll go this very night to the engineer.”
As soon as Mr. Razavi had gone, everyone was out of the mosquito nets. The big pool in the middle of the yard was full to the brim and my father was walking up and down, looking at the water with pleasure. Our eyes were fixed on my father’s lips; finally he said with a satisfied smile, “The evil warrior Shemr has been confounded and water flows abundantly in the desert of Karbela . . . just that behind the desert there’s still no water . . . now the colonel will have to get water from us in water-skins.”
I stood there petrified; the problem of our being without water was solved but I knew that Dear Uncle Napoleon would not take this defeat lying down. I looked worriedly toward his side of the garden but as yet there was no sound from there.
After breakfast, which passed in silence, I made my way, step by step, toward Dear Uncle’s house and, by going from tree to tree, I got myself to Dear Uncle’s door. Suddenly I heard a voice from the balcony overlooking the garden, which was where Dear Uncle slept during the summer. I hid behind a tree.
It was Dear Uncle’s voice, trembling with rage and hardly able to emerge from his throat. I climbed onto a branch and looked over toward the balcony. Dear Uncle had slipped the cord of his field glasses around his neck, over his nightshirt; he was looking attentively through the field glasses at our pool and insulting Mash Qasem. “Idiot, traitor . . . you fall asleep and they come and bring water . . . Marshall Grouchy betrayed Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo . . . and you’ve betrayed me in the battle with this devil!”
Mash Qasem, who was hanging his head and standing behind Dear Uncle, began whining and pleading, “Sir, as God’s my witness, it’s not my fault. Why should I lie . . . to the grave it’s . . .”
“That day I risked my life to save you from certain death in the Battle of Kazerun, you traitor, if I’d known that you’d betray me like Grouchy one day, I’d have cut my hand off and not bothered to carry your
filthy body on my shoulders . . .”
“God, sir, if it was my fault, I hope I never eat in your house again, sir. Why should I lie, sir? To the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . . This man you’re talkin’ about, sir . . . this Guchi guy, I dunno what kind of a man he was, but I’ve eaten your bread and salt, sir . . . if there’s another hundred wars, while there’s a drop of blood still in my body I’ll be there for you, sir. But this time they caught us nappin’, sir . . . last night it wasn’t the turn of round here for water . . . they must’ve slipped the water guy a sweetener to bring ’em water . . . the water’s supposed to come here tonight . . . I was asleep and they came and opened the channel . . .”
As he was insulting Mash Qasem in the most violent language, calling him traitor, spy, filthy dog, lackey of the British, and so forth, Dear Uncle went back into his room with the whining Mash Qasem following him and begging for forgiveness. Although I knew that Dear Uncle had gone to plan some terrible revenge on my father, I mostly felt sorry for Mash Qasem. When I got back to our house, I saw our maidservant engaged in cleaning smoked fish. I thought perhaps the notion of Shir Ali the butcher coming for supper was actually going to happen.
My mother was busy talking to my father in the cellar. “All right, you want to give that fat pig Shir Ali rice and herbs, give it to him, but for God’s sake don’t talk about this particular business. The man’s always looking for a knife fight, he’s crazy . . . if he kills someone you’ll be to blame . . . you told Aziz al-Saltaneh, that’s enough . . . that woman’s enough for seven poor wretches like Dustali Khan . . .”
“I didn’t say a word to Aziz al-Saltaneh, but if I’d known, I’d certainly have told her. It’s a pity for the great deeds of this family to stay hidden, such select nobility as they all are. The aristocracy of Iran’s ashamed to lift its head up. One of its exalted members has been messing about with a woman from the lower classes and must be destroyed for the crime of ruining the aristocracy’s reputation.”
My Uncle Napoleon Page 11